Why #IDesignHere with Wriggle

Last week we met up with Rob and Yasmin of Wriggle to find out why they chose Bristol as the city to launch their app, Wriggle.
If you’ve not yet heard of it, Wriggle connects hungry foodies with the best in independent food and drink to bristol restaurants, promoting everything from single origin coffee to sushi. The team joined us for coffee at the suitably independent, Harts Bakery.
Bristol & Bath by Design: Why are you in Bristol? What brought you here?
Rob: I’d been a student in Bristol. I moved to London for a few years after graduation. When, I had the idea for Wriggle, we were looking for a thriving food and drink scene, but also a city that felt open to ideas – and Bristol seemed the perfect place for it.
Wriggle was born out of our love of indie food and drink businesses and the stories behind those companies. We were also really interested in working to reduce food waste while supporting local business. It felt like Bristol was receptive to that. I think there are two big decisions that I made that have got Wriggle this far – and one of them was leaving London and coming to Bristol.
The support in the city is amazing – we’ve received top quality mentoring and guidance from Webstart and SETsquared, and we also met the very talented designer, Zamira Drew, who did brilliant work on our logo and branding.
Yasmin explains: I think Bristol is vital to what we’ve done. The size of the city also helped enormously. For example, we could go out along Gloucester Road and speak to 50 brilliant local businesses in one afternoon. Being able to do that allowed us to build momentum with just a couple of us in a short space of time.
Rob: Yeah – it’s exciting that we arrived in Bristol with an idea, and a year later we’ve launched the app in London and are exploring how to expand Wriggle in new ways – cultural events and ticketing for example.
Bristol & Bath by Design: That’s great! What’s next?
Bristol’s thrown up lots of opportunities to develop Wriggle, so we're now considering how to explore those, and also take Wriggle to new cities. We want to do this carefully, making sure we maintain the values that have made us popular so far.